April 12, 2026 • 47 mins
We talk with Lynn Ward about why marketing is shifting from search and retrieve to solve my problem, and why speed is becoming the moat for agencies and clients alike. We break down what AI-first agencies are building right now to protect conversions, reduce bottlenecks, and stay visible as web traffic and SEO change.
• search behavior shifting as ChatGPT and other LLMs absorb intent
• speed as the new moat for agencies and operators
• why agency pricing based on headcount starts to fail
• practical case studies like instant quoting and support automation
• building a data room as the foundation for AI systems
• using AI chatbots to capture real customer questions and drive content
• data governance, privacy, and shadow AI risks inside companies
• how we use ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity differently
• lead gen fading while brand building and microinfluencer content rise
• YouTube Shorts as a visibility lever for LLM citations
Guest Contact Information:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lenward
More from EWR and Matthew:
Leave us a review wherever you listen: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Podcast
Free SEO Consultation: www.ewrdigital.com/discovery-call
With over 5 million downloads, The Best SEO Podcast has been the go-to show for digital marketers, business owners, and entrepreneurs wanting real-world strategies to grow online.
Now, host Matthew Bertram — creator of the LLM Visibility Stack™, and Lead Strategist at EWR Digital — takes the conversation beyond traditional SEO into the AI era of discoverability.
Each week, Matthew dives into the tactics, frameworks, and insights that matter most in a world where search engines, large language models, and answer engines are reshaping how people find, trust, and choose businesses. From SEO and AI-driven marketing to executive-level growth strategy, you’ll hear expert interviews, deep-dive discussions, and actionable strategies to help you stay ahead of the curve.
Find more episodes here:
Rate the show in your podcast app. Apple ratings are how new listeners decide whether to press play — an honest one takes about thirty seconds. Steps for iPhone, Mac and Spotify:
www.bestseopodcast.com/review
Follow us on:
Facebook: @bestseopodcast
Instagram: @thebestseopodcast
Tiktok: @bestseopodcast
LinkedIn: @bestseopodcast
Connect With Matthew Bertram:
Website: www.matthewbertram.com
Instagram: @matt_bertram_live
LinkedIn: @mattbertramlive
Powered by: ewrdigital.com
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:02):
This is the unknown secrets of internet marketing.
Your insider guide to thestrategies top marketers use to
crush the competition.
Ready to unlock your businessfull potential.
Let's get started.
SPEAKER_01 (00:17):
Howdy, welcome back to another fun filled episode of
the Unknown Secrets of InternetMarketing.
I am your host with MattBertram.
And it's getting real.
Okay, so things are changing inthe marketing world that is
percolating into every componentof business, whether it be um
HR, whether it be documentreview, whether it be kind of
(00:39):
your internal operations, butyour infrastructure layer is
changing.
We talked about that a littlebit last time.
So I wanted to bring in somebodythat kind of can help continue
that conversation forward ofwhat AI first and AI um enabled
marketing agencies look like.
So I know that there are a lotof agencies out there that are
listening.
This is your North Star of whereyou need to go.
(01:01):
So I wanted to bring in LynnWard, who's been building these
systems day in and day out.
And Lynn, I just wanted, we weretalking a little bit before.
I said, hey, let's hit record,let's jump into this.
But like let's let's talk abouthow kind of marketing shifted
and kind of the direction you'regoing with agency work.
SPEAKER_02 (01:20):
Yeah, great.
Well, first off, thanks forhaving me.
Um, so yeah, I mean, we'removing more like we mentioned
before.
We are all of us in the agencyworld have got to understand
that we are moving away fromsearch and retrieve to solve my
problem.
It is an absolutely fundamentalshift in how you run an agency,
how you build an agency goingforward, how you hire, how you
(01:41):
fire, what you're building, andso forth.
Um, right now, traffic is apremium when it comes to a
website.
I don't think I've talked to oneagency owner who's not saying,
hey, traffic kind of droppingoff a lot of my clients'
websites.
It's not because you're doing abad job, it's because one
billion users are using ChatGPTon a weekly basis.
I'm not even getting into Geminiand Claude and the rest of them
(02:01):
yet.
So the traffic's happeningbecause they don't want to go
search on Google.
They don't want to start readingthrough lengthy blog posts and
everything else we're doing.
They want to arrive at yourwebsite and they want you to
solve their problem.
And I basically put it in anutshell like this: if they use
ChatGPT to find you, how quickthat was, do you think they're
going to want to go to yourwebsite and do time travel back
(02:23):
to the horse and buggy world?
They don't want to.
They want the answer now.
So, what we're building evenbefore marketing is we
understand that again, trafficis at a premium.
So, what can we put on thewebsite, what or on social
anywhere that can start solvingpeople's problems right away?
Anywhere from AI chatbots,anywhere from custom GPTs,
getting business owners tounderstand notebook LLMs, to
(02:46):
kind of build out an audience,to understand what their TAM is,
to understand what their ICP is.
So it's really going into yourclient base and saying, look, I
understand you're paying us todo lead gen, and I understand
that's what our main goal is,but lead gen is rapidly going
away.
I think we're all seeing that.
So what does it look like in thenext year or two?
I mean, Christ, we could evensay what's gonna look like in
(03:06):
the next six months.
And I think the most importantpart right now is anybody that's
coming to your website, you haveto look at that as an asset.
And how can we capitalize onthat asset?
Because it's not churn and burnthe way we've all been used to
for what, 20-something years.
Just get as many people into thewebsite, and then you know how
many leads you're gonna getbased upon the traffic to the
website and so forth.
So that's kind of what we'vebeen working on.
(03:27):
So we've been kind of looking atmarketing bottlenecks, we've
been looking at businessbottlenecks, we've been looking
at customer service bottlenecks.
What can we build?
What can we vibe code?
Um, what can we put on a GPT?
Like, what can we do to get theclient's information into a
repository, a data room, wherethat data room can be tapped
into whatever product you'rebuilding and can give the
(03:48):
client, the customer, theinternal team, the fastest
answer possible uh to kind ofget to that point, you know,
where you can start servicingwhat you need to service.
And in a big, long-winded answerto us speed is your new moat,
and the fastest company is goingto win in this in this new
world.
SPEAKER_01 (04:05):
Yeah, I I feel like the step change that's happening
to if you are really utilizingthese tools and you're not
giving it just lip service islike you you talked about the
horse and buggy analogy.
The analogy that keeps coming upto me is um when like phones or
like the quality of the phone orwhat what like a VCR, like VCR
(04:28):
changes to Blu-ray, or likethere's there's like a
utilization change.
Like if you're building websitesa certain way, there's a new way
to build them that you justcan't go back to once you start
building them.
And the people that are doing ittheir own way, that technology
doesn't fit with the newtechnology.
So you have to like go over thatmoat and transition into that
(04:50):
component.
And if uh gosh, like I'm tryingto think of like 4K cameras
versus whatever it was calledbefore, but like that technology
doesn't always interact reallywell, and so unless you make
that jump and and and reallyinvest in that technology,
you're gonna hit a brick wall oncertain things.
Like you can you can enablecertain things, you could do
(05:12):
certain things.
Like we were we were doing that,like so.
We were like, Oh, okay, well,we're gonna still use WordPress
and we're gonna still make thesethings work.
And um, as we started gettinginto it and as we started
looking, we're like, we have toreimagine this whole thing,
okay, and we're gonna do itcompletely different.
And just to what you weresaying, the speed being your new
mood is if you're doing it thenew way, and there's other
(05:33):
people still doing it the ownway, every month, every quarter,
every year, whatever that'shappening, which we can't even
predict out a year, um, thatmode is like you said, getting
widened.
And and I think it's I I thinkthe people that are giving lip
service to this and the agenciesthat are really investing it,
you're gonna start to see quitea quite a bit of separation.
And and once you make thechange, it's it's it's hard to
(05:56):
go back, frankly.
SPEAKER_02 (05:58):
I I don't disagree.
I mean, to give you an analogy,just because well, because came
right to mind when you said itwas we all remember when you
were going to Netflix andclicking your boxes and the
discs were getting sent to you,and then 18 months later you're
turning on your TV and the andthe and the feeds coming in.
So that's the seismic shiftyou're looking at.
And now, why don't you put thaton steroids and times it by a
million?
(06:18):
That that's the shift.
SPEAKER_01 (06:20):
That you know, I'm glad you brought that up.
And sorry I didn't articulate itthat well, guys.
It's been a really long week.
I'm graduating from this GoldmanSachs program, and and like I I
got my final pitch, and so I'vebeen all over the place.
But what I what I can tell youwith that specifically, my mom
was one of the first uhemployees of Microsoft, okay.
And I actually wanted to getinto the like Red Box business
(06:40):
before it was called Red Box.
Uh, and my mom was like, no,it's all gonna be streaming,
okay.
And the tail on the the oldtechnology is so much longer
than she thought or that I sawbecause there's still red boxes
at, you know, a couplepharmacies here and there, but
like the use of that is goingdown and down and down and down.
(07:01):
And and I think that that'swhat's gonna happen with
agencies, right?
Like there's gonna be this bigchange over, and then there's
gonna be this slow trend that'sgonna like the people are still
gonna be doing it that way, butit's gonna be harder and harder
to operate that business that'sin a dying kind of place.
So you need to make the U-turn,or not the U-turn, but the left
(07:24):
turn or the right turn and startgetting on, taking action with
some of these things now becauselike that mode you're gonna
either it's gonna either bewidened by you or it's gonna be
shrunken.
But now's still a time to makethe leap.
But I I think in another sixmonths or a year, like good luck
is is kind of where I'm at.
SPEAKER_02 (07:44):
Yeah, I I don't think I think if we collectively
look at all of ourselves as anagency and we kind of let's just
say there's a hundred of us in aroom, right?
We'll say that's all the agencyowners.
I think you're gonna be down toabout 20 in the next 18 months.
And you you made a couple goodpoints.
I think the problem agencies arefacing right now to kind of talk
agency talk is number one,they're way too top-heavy, you
have way too many employees.
(08:04):
You don't need 25 copywriters,you don't need 25 web designers.
I'm not trying to be a jerkbecause I've been running an
agency for 20-something yearsand I want to keep everybody
employed.
I am not here to get people, youknow, on the firing line.
But if you're running an agency,you don't need that anymore.
Um, it's just not relevant.
So that's number one.
Number two, the value thatagencies still put in headcount
(08:24):
is absolutely blows me away.
You know, where it's almost likea thump your chest type thing.
Maybe five, 10 years ago, thatwas a great thing to walk in and
you walk into Comexas and see 25plus employees, it was awesome.
You go walk into Madison Ave andgo walk into Havas or one of
these major shops, great shops,tremendous, and there'll be
thousands and thousands ofpeople.
You're gonna look foolish in thenext two years if you have
thousands and thousands ofemployees in a marketing agency
(08:47):
because companies aren't gonnawant to pay that overhead.
So you pitching this product,and at the end of the day,
agencies have to pitch aproduct, their price is
predicated 100% on what theirheadcount is.
So if you have a real highheadcount, your prices are
higher.
Companies are not gonna pay thatbecause they understand the
shift has happened.
So agencies, I think, that arereally slow to the you know the
(09:08):
pitch here, and I'll be honest,I run into a lot of them.
And and I do have a lot ofbuddies that are running
agencies.
I'm like, hey, you got toreally, really embrace it.
And I get more resistance fromnot, you know, they're like,
well, this isn't gonna change,that's gonna change, and it's
it's all changing, you know, andand not only that, but you're
looking at we're truly at theintersection of AI and
influencer marketing.
So this whole Google searchworld that we've lived in, which
(09:31):
was awesome, um, I think that'schange.
And everybody, every littlebusiness has to be a micro
influencer and has to understandthe AI platforms again, the
solve problems.
That's where the future of leadgen and business is headed,
especially in the agency world.
So, yeah, to make your point orto capitalize on your point, the
people that are doing lipservice and not really embracing
this and studying it, they'rethey're making them, and the
(09:53):
ones that are doing this masshiring, you're making a major
mistake.
SPEAKER_01 (09:57):
Yeah, to to speak to that, and this is kind of uh
some other podcasts that thathave gone on where we get into
more heady conversation, but thethe the social contract between
labor and capital has reallychanged, and so now it's like
capital and compute, right?
And so, um, and and that's whywe hear all this stuff about uh
electricity and what like we'reseeing like like 40 million
(10:20):
dollar exits, right?
Like base 44 sold to Wix, likeit was one guy in Israel or
whatever.
Like, so things things arecertainly changing, and people
are now bragging.
That's what I'm seeing online,is people are not bragging that
they're like a one-person agencyor this or that.
Like, so so I think the there'sa sea change that's happening.
And if you're operating yourbusiness and you're not kind of
(10:41):
uh looking up and lookingaround, you're gonna get left
behind.
And I I feel like there was thisinitial wave of people starting
to use tools, and then they justkind of go, Oh, I got more
productivity, and then theystopped and they're continuing
to operate that business.
And so, what I'm trying to do onthis podcast is continue to push
people that you need to keepgoing, like keep going.
It's gonna there's gonna be lesspeople there, and when you have
(11:04):
normal conversations in the realworld, yeah, it's it's kind of
it's kind of like people arelooking at you like, what's
going on?
Because it hasn't affected theirjobs yet.
It it hit us in marketing first,but I mean it's coming, right?
It's coming.
I I'm starting to see that thatchange.
So I know people are like, Matt,get to the point.
So I'll bring it back.
So when when you're running amarketing agency and you were
(11:25):
talking about the search andretrieve and then solve my
problem, can you go into somekind of case studies of what
that solved my problem lookslike?
How like you're getting requeststo do other things outside of
maybe just marketing, like thatyou're coming in, maybe it's
customer service, you know,you're tying stuff into the CRM,
maybe it's HR.
Like, like it, it's it's fanningout of what you can do once you
(11:48):
build this infrastructure andyou kind of orchestrate some of
these agents.
Like, can you talk through someof that?
SPEAKER_02 (11:53):
Yeah.
So we we're lucky enough where alot of our clients do want to
talk business with us.
Um, they want to kind of look atsome infrastructure.
They do want to talk aboutcustomer service.
So it's almost like a givenwhere, you know, lead gen, we're
coming in and we're going to beable to generate your leads
based upon what's going on.
But some of the case studiesthat we find is, you know, one
of the things where AI workswell is the bottleneck in
(12:16):
closing business, thebottlenecks in getting the
proposal out to the person.
I can't tell you how many timesyou look at maybe a contractor
and they come, they do anestimate on your house, and you
maybe get an estimate back.
Well, two weeks later in thisday and age, it's it's insane.
Um, or you have another B2Bservice type business that's
going out and hey, I'll I'llbring you back a quote.
I'm gonna look at these specs.
(12:36):
We're able to build platformsright now where salespeople can
do quotes on the spot and say,this is what it's gonna be,
because we're building a dataroom database.
They don't need to go in and youknow put all these specs
together and say this is whatit's gonna cost.
They literally can enter it intoan AI chatbot uh or you know,
basically a chat bot we build ontop of an LLM and it can
literally spit back a quoteright away.
(12:57):
Other bottlenecks we're workingon is there are times where in a
customer service, there is like,you know, support tickets that
they need.
And typically you would have tohave somebody call you back, or
customer service would have towalk you through that, or even
have to send somebody out.
There's actually a B2B companythat does a lot of office, you
know, office equipment wherethey interact with the chat bot
and the chatbot will actuallysolve the problem, work walking
(13:19):
the person through it.
That eliminates customer servicefor hours, they can dedicate
their time somewhere else.
The rep who would go on the roadcan now go handle something
else.
So it's identifying what isprolonging your business from
getting accomplished, whatbottlenecks are you hitting?
Is that in closing a deal?
Is that customer service?
Is that an internal plan youguys are trying to work on?
Well, let me gather all thisinformation.
(13:40):
I tell people all the time thenumber one thing you do with a
business, especially if you'rein the ad world or if you're in
the consulting world, build adata room.
And that's fancy talk forDropbox or Google Drive.
And if you want to get, youknow, real tight, you can go to
your IT department and they canreally build solid departments
or you know, rooms for you.
But organize your data, have itall organized in the right way,
(14:02):
spend the time this quarter andget it done because every AI
tool that you want to use, yousimply just plug it into this
data room and now it's talkingthrough it.
So that's how we look at it.
SPEAKER_01 (14:11):
Yeah.
And one of the things youmentioned earlier was like
custom GPTs or gems, like youcan build for each client a data
set that you're using in youryour cloud data lake, if you
will, right?
Of whatever ecosystem you're in.
And you could drop thesedocuments in there.
You can use the chat bot torecall this data to help you
create better tailored data.
(14:32):
Um, there's a lot of promptsthat you can use from a prompt
engineering standpoint, as wellas kind of like you're using
almost like a rag system, right?
To to recall this.
And then, like one of the thingsthat we're we're doing for a
couple clients, and this is youknow something that's like we're
not we're not advertising it,but we're we're building LLMs,
uh, open source LLMs on theirserver so that they can recall
(14:55):
data where it's not gettingprocessed out of house.
So they're protecting theirdata.
So like we're we're starting tolook at kind of data governance
as as as I think importantbecause these these LLMs, like
once this data gets out there,it's you know, it's hard to get
it's hard to put back in a box.
And we're even seeing um peoplethat know how to use this data,
(15:15):
like you know, they they'reusing it not appropriately,
right?
So so at a company that we'reworking with right now, we're
calling it like shadow AI, Iguess.
And so people are using it andthey're putting proprietary
information into uh the publicrealm.
And and that's not ideal, right?
Especially if you have some ofthis stuff.
So you need to understand whatLynn's talking about with kind
(15:37):
of quote unquote the data lakesor keeping your stuff internal
and making sure that it's alltalking to each other inside um
like a terms of service whereyou know what's happening to the
data.
So I just want to throw that outthere because people are moving
really fast on stuff and we'reseeing stuff break.
Um, and so you know, just justbe careful of that.
SPEAKER_02 (15:58):
Yeah, you make a I think that's excellent.
We've been telling people,matter of fact, I have my son
who's in college and he'sthinking about making a complete
180 and going to IT school.
And I can't, I I'm like, I can'tsupport that enough.
Um, I don't think peopleunderstand how important IT, you
know, and you know, all of thatis going to become here.
And I know that anthropic justhad like you probably saw that.
SPEAKER_01 (16:18):
Yeah, yeah, I posted about that.
I was just like, even thebiggest company in the world is
dealing with these like issuesof like, oh, we didn't we didn't
set something and then we justwe just uh provided all all this
research and all this data thatyeah is proprietary.
SPEAKER_02 (16:33):
Yeah, that's it's concerning.
So yeah, you know, I so I thinkit's funny because this the
conversation's got to go alittle different, but I it's my
problem with IT is this.
Number one, they are probablymore needed now in this world
than almost anything, theyreally are.
The second thing is sometimesthey're gonna handcuff you so
much you're not gonna do your AIadvancements are gonna get
small.
So I think as much as an agencyor an industry like us, like
(16:55):
marketing, like we had toadvance, I think IT has got to
understand that they are notgonna be able to control the
speed of the car.
Typically, IT and security hasalways been able to control the
speed of a car in a business.
You no longer can do that.
So I think that the IT peopleare gonna have to lean on AI in
their own right to be able tokeep up to the speed of what's
going on because they could pullyou back and hinder your
(17:15):
business.
But you're making a very, verygood point.
I think it's something everyonehas to understand.
Your data, unfortunately, if youdon't play this game right,
whether you're gonna do it onSnowflake, however you want to
build your modes, your datacould get out there just by one
dumb thing.
And if you have an employeeuploading your, you know, has to
come up with a financialdocument for the CFO and throws
up all their company informationof a Fortune 500 company, that's
(17:38):
not good.
You don't do that into a chatGPT, um, because it will get out
there.
So you make a good point.
It's it's a it's we're in areally real world where the the
privacy is a concern.
SPEAKER_01 (17:48):
So so I want to bring this back to kind of the
the path that we were on, butbut I just I wanted to highlight
that because I was talking to acybersecurity expert, and
basically people were doingstuff at the company, and it
triggered a cybersecurityresponse, which cost the company
like 15 grand because peopleweren't utilizing it internally
and it looked like a hack.
SPEAKER_00 (18:08):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (18:09):
And so, you know, it's just something to be
thinking about when you're doingthis.
And I agree with like speed, butbreak things and like you know,
whatever it is, uh you know whatI mean?
Like and like uh development inthe real world or whatever it
is, like uh there's a couplequotes out there that I think
that uh is uh a subset cultureof startup, right?
(18:32):
And I think that there's adifference between startup and
like you know, if if you have alegacy business, how do you
transform?
You go through that digitaltransformation because I feel
like a lot of companies arestarting to get through the
like, oh, we need to use socialmedia, and now there's this
whole new thing of AI and like,oh my gosh, how do we get there?
And then they're like run, run,run, run, run.
(18:53):
And you know, they don't knowwhat the tech debt that's
happening is, and uh they couldmake some faux pas that could
really uh affect their business.
So I just wanted to kind ofthrow that out there in this
conversation, but I do a hundredpercent agree that we were
affected first and and now otherbusinesses are being affected.
So we we are kind of the theguided the guides and can
(19:16):
provide the guideposts for othercompanies that are going through
this transformation because Imean we got hit with it
immediately.
Um, so what are the what are thethings that you want to make
sure to kind of communicate andcover?
Let's get back on track withthis conversation.
SPEAKER_02 (19:28):
Well, I I think you made a good point though, about
I'm asked a lot of times whenpeople somebody will say, Well,
who do you, you know, because II have people say who should we
hire internally for AI or whatshould we do for this?
I come back and I do, and I knowit's easy for me to say this,
and I'm like a really goodmarketer, a really good marketer
whose job was threatened, theexistence was threatened, they
had to learn AI from the groundup.
(19:50):
And by the way, you trulyunderstand AI if you understand
business processes.
If you truly understand how abusiness runs, how the finances
work, how their products work,and you know that great
marketers, they get so involvedin a business that they could
work for that business afterabout six months' time because
of how much they're learning.
So if you have a marketer whotruly understands how to harness
AI and then understands yourbusiness processes, that's
(20:12):
probably one of the best peopleyou can hire for this.
So, as many AI marketers thatare worried about losing their
jobs, I tell people embrace AIunlike anything you ever have in
your life, because you, themarketers, are the ones that are
going to be hired internally andexternally to help people
navigate this AI world.
Because if you're worried about,oh, I think I'm late to the
(20:32):
game, late to the game.
The best stat I've heard is 5%of companies have done anything
in AI outside of use it for atool for a little bit of
marketing, a little bit ofemails, and a little bit of
writing blog posts.
5%.
So it's kind of like what peopledidn't realize is up until
COVID, it was something like 70%of small businesses had
websites.
There was still 30% that didn'thave websites.
(20:54):
That's now now of a COVID,everybody had to get it.
You remember because you knowyou had to get online fast.
But it's, you know, so there isa huge runway for people who are
thinking about getting into AI,want to get involved.
Don't think you're late to thegame.
You're you think you're late tothe game because the amount of
information we're digesting,social media, and and you're
like, oh my God, everybody'sdoing it.
No, your your your feed andalgorithm, you think everybody's
(21:16):
doing it.
But the reality, but as you walkin a room again of 100 people,
you maybe have five people thattruly understand AI, maybe the
way you and I are talking rightnow, and the rest of them are
like, I have no idea what it is,and I'm gonna lose my job.
So I really tell people toreally lean into it.
Don't be afraid of it.
SPEAKER_01 (21:32):
Yeah, we live in a bubble to a certain degree, but
if you're in the bubble andyou're benchmarking what's
happening, it's moving quitefast.
But that's where you want to be.
You want to be the tip of thespear of what's going on.
I would love to hear kind ofsome case studies of the
organize, train, deploy,optimize, and scale kind of
framework of like how you'vebeen able to implement that and
(21:53):
what that looks like uh forbusinesses.
SPEAKER_02 (21:56):
Well, I think one of the best things companies can do
is add AI chatbots to theWebsite.
I'm coming back to the AIchatbot.
You can buy them off the shelf.
You could build one on Replit.
You could build one on ClaudeCode.
Basically, what this does is ittakes the content from your
website or a content you put ina data room and it talks to the
customers that are coming onyour website and it gives them
(22:16):
an answer.
This is not like your dad'schatbot that you remember where
they never give you an answer ora law firm one where they just
want to get your exchangeinformation to get a lead.
These things, their job isactually to try to solve your
problem and answer a question.
But from a marketingperspective, I don't think
people understand how powerfulit is.
You know, for years we sat thereand we listened to keywords and
(22:36):
user intent, right?
And we'd say, okay, well, theyall landed on this page.
This is the basket of keywordsthey were probably using.
That's gone.
Now you're actually hearingactual conversations that
they're happening with yourwebsite.
And the best part about it isthe minute you have a chatbot on
your website, you're never goingto have to worry about coming up
with a calendar again, a contentcalendar, because it's literally
(22:57):
telling you these are the 25questions that were asked this
month.
Five of these questions wecouldn't answer because there's
nothing on your website but isrelevant to your business.
So that little thing is the ahamoment for marketers and you
know, business people, when theysee that, they're like, wow.
So that's a case study.
When I tell people, I'm like,all right, AI's scary, it's big
and all of that, but why don'twe do this?
Let's let's come in in a veryeasy, affordable way.
(23:19):
And we're gonna put an AIchatbot on your website.
After 90 days, we're gonna sitback and it's gonna tell you
every single thing you know.
I say this to every person Ihear.
I guarantee when I come back in90 days and sit down in your
conference room, you will notsay, I cannot believe somebody
asked that.
I never thought I saw that.
I never thought in my life acustomer was asking that.
It never happens.
So they always see it andthey're like, oh my god, they
(23:41):
and they have a list ofquestions.
They're like, We never thoughtabout that.
I'm like, yeah, because youknow, this is what AI is doing
for you.
SPEAKER_01 (23:46):
So there's there's two things I want to say that it
makes me think back to some oldpodcasts.
First is there was a guy that Iuh brought on the podcast that
was selling um live uh chatbots,like a live human behind the
chatbot.
And I was kind of talkingsimilar to what you were saying.
And like on the call, he waslike, Are you selling AI
(24:08):
chatbots?
And I was like, No, I just thinkthat that's the future.
I think that that's where it'sgoing.
So um when you started talking,that that reminded me of it.
And so, you know, if anybody uhlistens to the podcast, they'll
know what I'm talking about, oryou can go uh check that out.
And then um one of the otherthings that you said, um, I
totally forgot.
So we'll just keep on rolling.
(24:30):
Um, but no, oh, here's what itwas.
There was another guy that wasdoing lead gen sites and uh in
kind of really like nicheindustries, like one was in the
mushroom industry, like I guessedible mushrooms and whatever.
Um, but but basically from adata mining standpoint, uh the
search box as well as could beuh extended to a chat bot, all
(24:52):
the questions that you as abusiness owner get to collect,
what people are trying to figureout and find that you don't know
that people are asking, givesyou a window into um who your
target audience is, what's goingon in their heads, like where
they're at, what questionsthey're asking.
And and a lot of times when weget the data, depending on
(25:13):
however you get it, and you lookat what the client's asking you
to do or what the client thinksis the next step, the data
doesn't always align with that.
Sometimes, like it gives youconfirmation, but sometimes it
opens up the discussion, likeyou said, to to other things.
And I think that that's reallyimportant to consider.
What do you not know about yourcustomer or why do you think
that they're buying?
(25:34):
Like doing the real dataanalysis to understand what's
happening, that's that was thestep change from traditional
marketing to digital marketing.
Like a lot of times when I talkto people that are running
terrestrial radio still orthey're running TV ads, like
when I'm on like a like a like amulti-functional team and I'm
bringing the data component, wea lot of times stay on after and
(25:56):
they're like, How is how is itaffecting the data on the
website when we're running radioads or we're running TV ads?
Because I'm trying to figureout, okay, when you run when you
when you bought this flight,like the the brand search went
like through the roof, and I cansee in the geographic areas
where that is, and then you cankind of start to map stuff out,
which has been pretty cool uhwhen you when you're working on
(26:17):
those bigger campaigns.
But what people I think need tounderstand is everything you're
doing, these LLMs are pickingthem up, like they're just like
a really smart individual.
But you push on over here,something affects over here.
You do it over here, same thingwith search systems, like you do
that, like people don'tunderstand everything you do
online affects your um your yourbrand um interpretation, your
(26:41):
your how your entitiesrepresented, how they're
associated with each other.
Like, even what you saidearlier, you like listed a bunch
of different agencies, and thenyou listed your agency in there.
Like you're building, like uh,you know, a a co-citation with
those companies, and we'reseeing like listicles come out,
like every like people don'tunderstand every single thing
that you're doing is impactinghow you're being perceived uh by
(27:06):
these tools.
And I think again, here'sanother crazy prediction.
I think everybody's gonna havetheir own chat bot, or most
people are gonna have their ownchat bot that really what you're
trying to do, and you're gonnahave other agents and uh
information, you're gonna betrying to sell to that agent so
that when that human asks thatquestion, that that personal
chat bot uh tells you what youwant them to hear.
(27:29):
And I think that that's I thinkthat that's ultimately where the
whole thing's going is yeah,your predictions.
SPEAKER_02 (27:36):
You we, yeah, I don't know, you you might have
heard me talk or I might haveheard you talk, but because I
actually said I'm like, This ismy prediction, but I might have
stole from somebody.
But um I don't know.
SPEAKER_01 (27:44):
I'm glad we're talking.
It sounds like we're on the samewavelength.
SPEAKER_02 (27:47):
Bottom line is we're on the same wavelength.
Yeah, I think it's I think thescariest thing for marketers is
exactly what you just said.
I think we're moving to a worldof agent-to-agent marketing
where your personal agent isgonna interact with another
agent, humans not even gonnahave any input whatsoever.
You're gonna, it's good, you'recounting you're looking at your
phone, be like, Oh, there's mycalendar for tomorrow or the
next day, and I'm gonna I haveto go here, I have to go there.
(28:09):
It's gonna know what creditcards to use, you know, here's
the points.
And I did hear this on a podcasta long time ago, but it was kind
of like it was kind of likeabstract.
But the more you look atsomething like open claw, the
more you maybe use agent modeand chat GPT.
And like you said, it's funnybecause now when I because I I
operate like I use, I literallyright now top my screen, I got
clawed, Gemini, and ChatGPT andNotebook LM open.
(28:32):
So, but the more I operate inall of them, and if I break up
you know all different customGPTs, you know, that's kind of
or gems or however you want tocall it projects, it it all
comes back to it, knows myentire conversation.
I had across every single one ofthem.
So that one being understandsLen Ward all the way.
So you're right.
So at what point are they gonnacome out with an apparatus,
(28:53):
which apparently Chat GPT isright around the corner having a
product that you're gonna walkaround with, and that's gonna be
interacting with every one ofthese chatbots out there.
SPEAKER_01 (29:02):
Okay, so you brought something up.
I think it's worth talking aboutbecause this is something that
that I personally do as well.
You're working with a bunch ofdifferent um uh of the major
LLMs, right?
So you you you talked aboutGemini, you talked about uh
Claude, you talked about ChatGPT.
How are you using them?
I think people would love tohear what you are using
different ones for because Icertainly have ones I go to for
(29:24):
certain things, because likealso like the like the memory
set, for example, I love chatGBT four and like where it had
per uh perpetual memory, um, andI was using it one way, and then
well, they turned that off, andnow I I like it because if I use
Claude, it will it'll try to tieit back to everything that we
(29:44):
talked about.
And if I just need like a uhlike a new thread, I'll start to
use chat GPT for this, or I'lluse Claude for this, and then
we're using Gemini's tied intoour whole workflow, and then
Manis is like hooked intoFacebook.
So I'm I'm curious just kind ofhow you're utilizing the
different LLMs, if you don'tmind sharing.
SPEAKER_02 (30:01):
No, that's that's good, great question.
So I personally use Chat GPT asmy operating system for
everything.
Um, so I have a myriad of umcustom GPTs that are built out
in there, so I am pretty much onthat daily.
That's the or that's your that'syour operating system.
That's my operating system.
Um Gemini, I find to be thesmartest.
(30:22):
So if I have to go do something,I think Gemini's deep research,
I think Notebook LLM, which is aproduct of theirs, I'll touch on
that in a minute because that'sa really under you live.
SPEAKER_01 (30:30):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's great.
Yeah, it's a great tool.
SPEAKER_02 (30:32):
Um, but so I go to Gemini when I when I look at the
Chat GPT answer, that'll comeback to me, or maybe it's
writing code or something, andI'll bring something over to
Gemini and I'll say, go throughthis.
It's funny because Gemini andChat GPT work very well
together.
If you actually get those twowhen you're kind of doing it, so
I cross-check a lot of stuff.
A lot of times, if I have aquick question and I want to
(30:52):
kind of go through something, Igo to Gemini.
So I'm finding myself using aGemini, but I'll say this that a
lot of people are saying themore I use Claude, the more I go
in there and try to touch onthings, the more I say to
myself, I'm like, Claude is sogoddamn advanced, it's
unbelievable.
I mean, it's almost like Claudeis the best version of Gemini
(31:13):
and Chat GPT, but strips out allthe bullshit.
And it's like, what do you want?
I'll create it.
That's it.
You don't have to do this andadd agent mode, and I'll do
whatever you want me to do.
So, but you know, and thenthere's by the way, there's the
other flip side that's anunderutilized tool, which is not
even notebook, but a lot ofpeople discount perplexity for
the quick search.
People like that for the search.
SPEAKER_01 (31:31):
The backlinks, like if you're if you're doing uh
backlink research on what wherewhere these LMs are pulling
from, I think I I've found thatto be the most helpful.
And uh, we've been starting tomess around with the perplexity
browser comet.
Uh yeah, it's good.
And so um I'm having a greattime.
Like, I mean, I know that it'sscary, but uh it's scary only if
(31:54):
you don't know what's going on.
And you know, I think I thinkthat that's what it is.
There's we have just so muchinformation that we're
processing today, like you know,emails and everything else, and
all this stuff is moving sorapidly and it's changing so
much, it becomes like overload.
And um, I think I think youknow, being in marketing or
(32:16):
being in digital or being likein that capacity, uh, you have a
real advantage to be able topick this stuff up because I
mean, look, the biggest problemI think in marketing is how many
different platforms are peoplestill logging into.
Like, that is my number one petpeeve.
Like, let's stop logging in toall these different platforms,
let's use NPCs to like connecteverything together and build,
(32:40):
like you say, like like the datalake to like reference from a
rag standpoint, like let'srecall this information from
this place.
Like, let's not take fracturedfragmented fractured data and
then put it all together.
I I don't know.
I just feel like marketers, itthe problem is so much in our
face that AI solves it and andit's forcing us to do it.
(33:04):
And under industries, like,look, my wife's in like
construction.
I mean, she doesn't want to haveanything to do to do with with
AI.
Um, but but I see opportunitiesfor it, I see advancements.
And I mean, I even see therobots walking out, uh, like you
know, with Melinda or whateverher name is, Melania.
Sorry, Melania.
(33:24):
Yeah, yeah.
Like, did you see that?
Like and like what Elon Musk istalking about.
I mean, when that comes aroundthe corner, I think that that's
gonna be the wake-up call likeCOVID of like, hey, you can work
from home, you can do stuffremote.
Like, I mean, Zoom calls, andI'll just say this.
Sorry, I'm on a on a on a just arant at this point, but I feel
like paid ads absolutely likeall the models we had when
(33:47):
everybody started getting intoPPC around COVID, um, threw out
like all the models that we hadof how we were running ads, and
and the market just became toosaturated.
And at a certain point, like howmuch juice can you squeeze out
of this lemon?
Like, like you need to fan outon some of these other
platforms.
And I think that that's whatforced the fan out and the
(34:08):
searching, um, and and andreally like the ad spin because
like Google's oversaturated incertain categories, it just
doesn't make sense to run ads.
And it's not that whoever'srunning the ads is uh not good
at operating it, it's just themarket uh it is flooded.
I don't know.
SPEAKER_02 (34:24):
No, I no, you're saying what I tell people all
the time.
I, you know, and I I kind of Ikind of look at it this way.
I am in lockstep with you.
I believe the lead gen that wehave all been accustomed to and
using as of late is is rapidlycoming to an end.
The the road's coming on.
So if you were a business, I saythis to a lot of lawyers, I say
this to a lot of likeservice-based people.
(34:46):
If your entire business was nomoney at all going towards a
brand except for a little bit ofswag and things like that, and
everything went towards leadgen, you were going to find
yourself in 18 months or less ina world of hurt.
It's it doesn't, it's not goingto exist the way you know you
think.
So if you're making all thesewhite papers and creating all
these blogs, although again,still works, but it's beginning
(35:08):
to draw back and fade.
So 20 some years I've been doingSEO.
I'm an SEO core at my core, I'mSEO.
I tell people all the time, I Idon't poo-poo it.
I don't, I it's it literallypaid my mortgage.
It's SEO is what I always did.
But I am, I do come out and say,if we're going from search and
retrieve to solve my problem,SEO does not live anymore.
(35:30):
It's it's going to fade away.
So as less and less people go toorganic search, more and more
people companies are going tosee that and they're going to
start spending more money onpay-per-click, which is going to
make it prohibitively to thepoint where if less people are
coming to Google and more peopleare advertising, you're going to
get to the point where you'relike, what are we doing?
So all of that's going tochange.
And the recommendation I tellcompanies all the time is two
(35:52):
things.
You got to become amicroinfluencer if you whether
you want to or not.
And number two, take the timeright now to pull the investment
back from lead gen and startputting the money into building
the brand and building your AI,solve my problem for when
clients come.
You need to do that now.
And too many companies arepushing ahead with lead gen and
saying, we'll figure it out.
And I don't think theyunderstand the train that's
(36:13):
coming.
It's not a light at the end ofthe tunnel, it's a train coming.
SPEAKER_01 (36:16):
When you and I are like so in lockstep, and and you
really set me up perfectly.
So I'm gonna do a shameless plugfor a book I wrote like five or
six years ago.
It was called Build Your BrandMania.
Okay.
And and that was actually thefirst book I ever wrote as I was
getting into the agency world.
Um, and and before, like, Imean, SEO was coming together,
(36:38):
it was probably 50% of likewhere my mind share was at the
time when I wrote that book.
But I wrote that book firstbecause I felt like you had to
build your personal brand.
This is when like the rise oflike Instagram and influencers
and all that kind of washappening.
But I still think that that bookis so relevant today because
it's about building who you areas a person, and then it's about
(37:00):
building your business.
And a lot of those, those, thosekey factors are still there.
And to even bring thisconversation back to kind of get
back, I guess, on track.
We've gone all over the place.
It's been fun, Lenny.
It's been really fun.
I would love to have you backon.
Is and and I would love to pushit forward a little bit more
with with the time that we haveleft.
But you know, Google, and I'vesaid this before, used to be
(37:24):
like a librarian.
Okay, you would go to thelibrarian and you would say,
Hey, like I need information onXYZ, and it'll be like, Go check
this out, check this out, checkthis out, check this out.
Now, what it's doing is you'regoing to the library and you're
like, give me the answer, right?
And then so they're they'regoing, they're researching all
the stuff, then they're comingback with you the answer.
And you said it.
You said, Hey, people are comingto you to doing the search that
(37:46):
way, and then when they come toyour website, you're still
asking them to figure it out andlike navigate your website, and
uh people's uh attention spansare just shrinking, shrinking,
shrinking.
I think uh Microsoft did astudy, and this was I think
2012, that said um our attentionspan was uh comparable to a
goldfish.
(38:07):
Yeah, maybe less.
Yeah, and and and that that wasbefore TikTok.
Okay.
So I would be interested to seewhat that study is now.
So I think to your point, from aconversion rate optimization
standpoint, like you're gettingpeople to come to your website,
a lot less people are coming,they're ready to buy, they're
well educated, make it easy forthem.
And in and you need to bethinking about how people are
(38:29):
operating now.
If they came to your websitethrough AI search, and you can
see that in analytics, you cansee where like it's growing,
it's growing, it's growing.
What are you doing on yourwebsite to convert?
So I would love to kind of pushthe conversation forward because
you brought that up at thebeginning of the podcast, and I
think it's so relevant.
How are we transforming whensomeone comes to the website uh
(38:51):
from the horse and buggy to likethe flying car?
If we were wanting to ElonMusk's uh, you know, whatever
roaster that's coming, like it'sapparently has wings.
Uh, I don't know.
Yeah, the Jetsons is coming,guys.
They promised it to us, and Ithink it's finally coming.
SPEAKER_02 (39:09):
So um, so well, back to the chat bot.
Uh, the reason I tell companiesto use the chat bot is so
there's there's two thoughtshere.
First, that's the future ofwebsites, worrying about
navigation and images and wherethe content's going to be.
And and you know, I here's wherethe video's got to be.
And you are gonna, we're alreadystarting to work on the first
(39:30):
websites where it's literallyjust a chatbot.
That's it.
And it's pulling in the video,it's pulling in the images, it's
pulling in the content, it'sasking, it's answering the
question.
They don't want to click around,drop, go from there.
So, my advice if you're anagency out there, start thinking
about websites way differentthan you ever have before.
The creative, the artisticdirection, the copyright, it's
(39:50):
all still matters, but now it'sgonna get pulled into a live
chat or an AI chatbot.
That is what websites are gonnalook like.
And on the flip side of that,websites are gonna have less
relevance.
You know why?
Because ChatGPT just came outand said, we're gonna start
showing less links.
Gem and I followed up and saidthe same thing.
They're all gonna come out andsay the same thing.
Why?
Because then it will be theoperating system of your life.
(40:12):
So if you haven't done thisbefore, go to ChatGPT, hit the
plus button down below, andyou're gonna see apps.
Apps is something they had acouple years ago.
They took it away, they boughtthem back.
So you're seeing all the majorcompanies with the apps in
there.
If you haven't interacted withit, go to Expedia, interact with
Expedia.
You don't ever leave ChatGPT.
You can book everything, geteverything done right there.
(40:33):
That is the future of yourwebsite.
So your website will be arepository with all of your
information.
You can do a chatbot and peoplecan kind of go through it and
pull the images and videos, andyou're gonna be building an app
along with it, which is verycheap, very affordable to do,
and all that information isgonna be in there.
So that, you know, kind ofbrings me to the question that I
think you know everybody wondersis well, what's gonna happen to
(40:54):
web traffic and how do we trackthat stuff?
I don't know.
I don't think anybody knows whatthat means.
Like, is it per interaction?
Like, what did you know?
Does the term web trafficactually not mean anything in a
couple of years?
It might.
It really might mean nothingbecause they're interacting with
your apps across theseplatforms.
So I think that's the thingwhere no world, it's it's almost
(41:16):
like you feel like you're partof like a Spanish galleon from
the 1700s crossing the water,like we don't know what the hell
the next mile is going to be.
We can't predict the weather.
You and we're just riding it.
But I think the people steeringthe ships, which are marketers,
which are really good businessconsultants, really good
leaders, you would hope thattheir experience gets you over
to where you got to be todeliver the quote unquote
(41:37):
treasure and get to that point.
But I I think that's a scarypoint right now.
Like we can forecast you and I,we can think about stuff, but
where we're going to be in 18months, I don't know.
I really don't know.
SPEAKER_01 (41:50):
So so Google came out at the beginning of the
year, they always do, of kind ofwhat they're focused on, and
they pivoted to YouTube, whichfalls in line with um what we
talked about about building thebrand.
They looked like they were alsogoing after, like you said,
collapsing the the funnel downwhere you can buy on Google.
So it looked like they weregoing head to head with Amazon.
(42:11):
So it's like Chat GBT is tryingto become, you know, Google,
Google's trying to becomeAmazon.
Um, also Google was saying, hey,YouTube's really, really
important, and we don't havetime to like open up that
thread.
But anybody that that that'slistening, uh, I've done a lot
of podcasts.
I have some great YouTubeexperts on.
Go check that out if you'restill interested in hearing more
(42:32):
about how to build that brand.
I'm gonna have to have Lynn backon.
Lynn, is there anything elsebefore I I want you to uh take
some time too to share aboutyour company and how people can
follow you and uh uh follow yourconversation?
Is um is there anything aboutthe conversation we've had today
that we didn't cover that youthought might be useful to uh
(42:52):
add to it before we get out ofhere?
SPEAKER_02 (42:54):
I want to go on exactly what you just said about
YouTube.
And this is something where I'vealways gone back and forth with
Gary Vaynerchuk.
There's times I look at him andI think the hustle, I'm like,
all right, it's a littleridiculous.
And then the other times, as oflate, I'm coming back to Gary
Vaynerchuk, and I'm like, thesome of the stuff he's saying
right now is really, reallygood.
And one of the best things hesaid, and it's a piece of advice
I give to people, not my advice,literally stealing this from
(43:14):
Gary Vaynerchuk.
He got up on a stage and hesaid, LLMs are reading your
YouTube Shorts.
They're reading your YouTubeShorts way more than you could
possibly think.
If you are not taking like thiscontent we have right here,
cutting it up on something likeOpus Clip and feeding it through
YouTube Shorts, you are making agrave mistake.
The people who invest in thatright now, do this for your
clients, do this for yourself.
(43:35):
Make them get behind a cameraand do it.
The YouTube Shorts that isgetting digested by all LLMs.
In the next six to eight months,the people who have put the
effort and time into that, youare going to start seeing them
getting cited more and more andmore on these LLMs.
I know there's a million ways inwhich you can get in there, and
there's a billion differentthings, but we've already
started testing that out andwe're saying we're seeing it
(43:56):
works.
SPEAKER_01 (43:56):
So I I think from uh uh the PR news cycle.
Standpoint, uh, YouTube fallsinto that category of like news.
So it's one of the things thatyou can do to kind of drive that
conversation and kind of checkthat box in the algorithm.
So YouTube, I and we're seeingthat we're seeing a lot of
requests of like, hey, can youhelp us with the podcast or
create content?
Um, and and you know, I justthink that this is where it's
(44:19):
going.
And people are like, oh my gosh,that's so difficult.
Well, it's been difficult.
It's it was kind of like a anice to have, maybe a couple of
years ago.
I think it's we're moving intoalmost a need to have.
And if you don't do it, it it'sjust gonna make life more and
more difficult.
And we're seeing we're seeingthat, we're seeing some kind of
desperation uh starting tohappen for certain businesses
(44:40):
that really didn't invest theirbrands.
So I think the biggest takeawayhere is well, it's a sea change,
it's a a a new discovery, a newfuture that we're moving into.
And like we're looking for theexplorers.
So uh, you know, if you knowanybody that really um likes to
explore and see where things aregoing and is a tech geek, refer
(45:01):
the refer out this podcast, letthem know about it.
Please follow and like um thatalgorithm really like we were
we're we're a podcast that hasbeen on iTunes for 15 something
years.
And you know, as we moved overto YouTube, like people don't
know we're there.
Uh people don't listen toYouTube that same way.
So we're we're reinventing whatwe're doing.
(45:22):
But um, if you're listening, youlike it, please, please give us
a like, please give us a follow,really, really help us out.
Lynn, how do people get in touchwith you?
Where are you putting outcontent?
How do people follow kind ofyour thought process uh these
days?
SPEAKER_02 (45:35):
They can just go to comexis.com, you can fill out a
form, you will, you will workwith me directly.
We are very, very selective, andnot to sound like a big shot.
We're very selective in who wework with.
We have a bandwidth that wehold, um, go from there, but you
can always follow me on YouTube,shorts at Comexis, you can
follow us on LinkedIn atComexis.
We try to get out as muchcontent as we can, at least a
couple times a week.
A lot of our podcasts are onthere, but any questions, I'm
(45:56):
always happy to jump on a calland kind of go through things.
SPEAKER_01 (45:59):
Awesome.
And the last thing I'll say, oh,my voice just uh popped there.
So last thing I'll say is I'vebeen trying to change our intro,
guys, for a long time.
It's on my list, it's very low.
If anybody wants to submit uh uhintro, and uh we will look at
them and we could select thebest one.
So appreciate any kind ofcrowdsource help.
We definitely are hiring rightnow.
(46:19):
We are hiring.
Um, we need people with certainskill sets, you can check it out
online, or you can reach out tous uh directly at
ewrdigital.com.
But if you want to grow yourbusiness with the largest, most
powerful tool on the planet, theinternet.
Well, and AI, I feel like AI isprobably the next phase.
Um listen to this podcast.
(46:40):
Um, listen to this podcast.
Uh, reach out to us, leave us acomment.
We really appreciate it.
Uh Lynn, thanks so much forcoming on.
Um, we'll we'll get we'll getyou back on too to continue the
conversation.
There's some threads we couldopen up there.
Until the next time, everybody.
My name is Matt Bertram.
Bye bye for now.
This is the unknown secrets of internet marketing.
Your insider guide to thestrategies top marketers use to
crush the competition.
Ready to unlock your businessfull potential.
Let's get started.
SPEAKER_01 (00:17):
Howdy, welcome back to another fun filled episode of
the Unknown Secrets of InternetMarketing.
I am your host with MattBertram.
And it's getting real.
Okay, so things are changing inthe marketing world that is
percolating into every componentof business, whether it be um
HR, whether it be documentreview, whether it be kind of
(00:39):
your internal operations, butyour infrastructure layer is
changing.
We talked about that a littlebit last time.
So I wanted to bring in somebodythat kind of can help continue
that conversation forward ofwhat AI first and AI um enabled
marketing agencies look like.
So I know that there are a lotof agencies out there that are
listening.
This is your North Star of whereyou need to go.
(01:01):
So I wanted to bring in LynnWard, who's been building these
systems day in and day out.
And Lynn, I just wanted, we weretalking a little bit before.
I said, hey, let's hit record,let's jump into this.
But like let's let's talk abouthow kind of marketing shifted
and kind of the direction you'regoing with agency work.
SPEAKER_02 (01:20):
Yeah, great.
Well, first off, thanks forhaving me.
Um, so yeah, I mean, we'removing more like we mentioned
before.
We are all of us in the agencyworld have got to understand
that we are moving away fromsearch and retrieve to solve my
problem.
It is an absolutely fundamentalshift in how you run an agency,
how you build an agency goingforward, how you hire, how you
(01:41):
fire, what you're building, andso forth.
Um, right now, traffic is apremium when it comes to a
website.
I don't think I've talked to oneagency owner who's not saying,
hey, traffic kind of droppingoff a lot of my clients'
websites.
It's not because you're doing abad job, it's because one
billion users are using ChatGPTon a weekly basis.
I'm not even getting into Geminiand Claude and the rest of them
(02:01):
yet.
So the traffic's happeningbecause they don't want to go
search on Google.
They don't want to start readingthrough lengthy blog posts and
everything else we're doing.
They want to arrive at yourwebsite and they want you to
solve their problem.
And I basically put it in anutshell like this: if they use
ChatGPT to find you, how quickthat was, do you think they're
going to want to go to yourwebsite and do time travel back
(02:23):
to the horse and buggy world?
They don't want to.
They want the answer now.
So, what we're building evenbefore marketing is we
understand that again, trafficis at a premium.
So, what can we put on thewebsite, what or on social
anywhere that can start solvingpeople's problems right away?
Anywhere from AI chatbots,anywhere from custom GPTs,
getting business owners tounderstand notebook LLMs, to
(02:46):
kind of build out an audience,to understand what their TAM is,
to understand what their ICP is.
So it's really going into yourclient base and saying, look, I
understand you're paying us todo lead gen, and I understand
that's what our main goal is,but lead gen is rapidly going
away.
I think we're all seeing that.
So what does it look like in thenext year or two?
I mean, Christ, we could evensay what's gonna look like in
(03:06):
the next six months.
And I think the most importantpart right now is anybody that's
coming to your website, you haveto look at that as an asset.
And how can we capitalize onthat asset?
Because it's not churn and burnthe way we've all been used to
for what, 20-something years.
Just get as many people into thewebsite, and then you know how
many leads you're gonna getbased upon the traffic to the
website and so forth.
So that's kind of what we'vebeen working on.
(03:27):
So we've been kind of looking atmarketing bottlenecks, we've
been looking at businessbottlenecks, we've been looking
at customer service bottlenecks.
What can we build?
What can we vibe code?
Um, what can we put on a GPT?
Like, what can we do to get theclient's information into a
repository, a data room, wherethat data room can be tapped
into whatever product you'rebuilding and can give the
(03:48):
client, the customer, theinternal team, the fastest
answer possible uh to kind ofget to that point, you know,
where you can start servicingwhat you need to service.
And in a big, long-winded answerto us speed is your new moat,
and the fastest company is goingto win in this in this new
world.
SPEAKER_01 (04:05):
Yeah, I I feel like the step change that's happening
to if you are really utilizingthese tools and you're not
giving it just lip service islike you you talked about the
horse and buggy analogy.
The analogy that keeps coming upto me is um when like phones or
like the quality of the phone orwhat what like a VCR, like VCR
(04:28):
changes to Blu-ray, or likethere's there's like a
utilization change.
Like if you're building websitesa certain way, there's a new way
to build them that you justcan't go back to once you start
building them.
And the people that are doing ittheir own way, that technology
doesn't fit with the newtechnology.
So you have to like go over thatmoat and transition into that
(04:50):
component.
And if uh gosh, like I'm tryingto think of like 4K cameras
versus whatever it was calledbefore, but like that technology
doesn't always interact reallywell, and so unless you make
that jump and and and reallyinvest in that technology,
you're gonna hit a brick wall oncertain things.
Like you can you can enablecertain things, you could do
(05:12):
certain things.
Like we were we were doing that,like so.
We were like, Oh, okay, well,we're gonna still use WordPress
and we're gonna still make thesethings work.
And um, as we started gettinginto it and as we started
looking, we're like, we have toreimagine this whole thing,
okay, and we're gonna do itcompletely different.
And just to what you weresaying, the speed being your new
mood is if you're doing it thenew way, and there's other
(05:33):
people still doing it the ownway, every month, every quarter,
every year, whatever that'shappening, which we can't even
predict out a year, um, thatmode is like you said, getting
widened.
And and I think it's I I thinkthe people that are giving lip
service to this and the agenciesthat are really investing it,
you're gonna start to see quitea quite a bit of separation.
And and once you make thechange, it's it's it's hard to
(05:56):
go back, frankly.
SPEAKER_02 (05:58):
I I don't disagree.
I mean, to give you an analogy,just because well, because came
right to mind when you said itwas we all remember when you
were going to Netflix andclicking your boxes and the
discs were getting sent to you,and then 18 months later you're
turning on your TV and the andthe and the feeds coming in.
So that's the seismic shiftyou're looking at.
And now, why don't you put thaton steroids and times it by a
million?
(06:18):
That that's the shift.
SPEAKER_01 (06:20):
That you know, I'm glad you brought that up.
And sorry I didn't articulate itthat well, guys.
It's been a really long week.
I'm graduating from this GoldmanSachs program, and and like I I
got my final pitch, and so I'vebeen all over the place.
But what I what I can tell youwith that specifically, my mom
was one of the first uhemployees of Microsoft, okay.
And I actually wanted to getinto the like Red Box business
(06:40):
before it was called Red Box.
Uh, and my mom was like, no,it's all gonna be streaming,
okay.
And the tail on the the oldtechnology is so much longer
than she thought or that I sawbecause there's still red boxes
at, you know, a couplepharmacies here and there, but
like the use of that is goingdown and down and down and down.
(07:01):
And and I think that that'swhat's gonna happen with
agencies, right?
Like there's gonna be this bigchange over, and then there's
gonna be this slow trend that'sgonna like the people are still
gonna be doing it that way, butit's gonna be harder and harder
to operate that business that'sin a dying kind of place.
So you need to make the U-turn,or not the U-turn, but the left
(07:24):
turn or the right turn and startgetting on, taking action with
some of these things now becauselike that mode you're gonna
either it's gonna either bewidened by you or it's gonna be
shrunken.
But now's still a time to makethe leap.
But I I think in another sixmonths or a year, like good luck
is is kind of where I'm at.
SPEAKER_02 (07:44):
Yeah, I I don't think I think if we collectively
look at all of ourselves as anagency and we kind of let's just
say there's a hundred of us in aroom, right?
We'll say that's all the agencyowners.
I think you're gonna be down toabout 20 in the next 18 months.
And you you made a couple goodpoints.
I think the problem agencies arefacing right now to kind of talk
agency talk is number one,they're way too top-heavy, you
have way too many employees.
(08:04):
You don't need 25 copywriters,you don't need 25 web designers.
I'm not trying to be a jerkbecause I've been running an
agency for 20-something yearsand I want to keep everybody
employed.
I am not here to get people, youknow, on the firing line.
But if you're running an agency,you don't need that anymore.
Um, it's just not relevant.
So that's number one.
Number two, the value thatagencies still put in headcount
(08:24):
is absolutely blows me away.
You know, where it's almost likea thump your chest type thing.
Maybe five, 10 years ago, thatwas a great thing to walk in and
you walk into Comexas and see 25plus employees, it was awesome.
You go walk into Madison Ave andgo walk into Havas or one of
these major shops, great shops,tremendous, and there'll be
thousands and thousands ofpeople.
You're gonna look foolish in thenext two years if you have
thousands and thousands ofemployees in a marketing agency
(08:47):
because companies aren't gonnawant to pay that overhead.
So you pitching this product,and at the end of the day,
agencies have to pitch aproduct, their price is
predicated 100% on what theirheadcount is.
So if you have a real highheadcount, your prices are
higher.
Companies are not gonna pay thatbecause they understand the
shift has happened.
So agencies, I think, that arereally slow to the you know the
(09:08):
pitch here, and I'll be honest,I run into a lot of them.
And and I do have a lot ofbuddies that are running
agencies.
I'm like, hey, you got toreally, really embrace it.
And I get more resistance fromnot, you know, they're like,
well, this isn't gonna change,that's gonna change, and it's
it's all changing, you know, andand not only that, but you're
looking at we're truly at theintersection of AI and
influencer marketing.
So this whole Google searchworld that we've lived in, which
(09:31):
was awesome, um, I think that'schange.
And everybody, every littlebusiness has to be a micro
influencer and has to understandthe AI platforms again, the
solve problems.
That's where the future of leadgen and business is headed,
especially in the agency world.
So, yeah, to make your point orto capitalize on your point, the
people that are doing lipservice and not really embracing
this and studying it, they'rethey're making them, and the
(09:53):
ones that are doing this masshiring, you're making a major
mistake.
SPEAKER_01 (09:57):
Yeah, to to speak to that, and this is kind of uh
some other podcasts that thathave gone on where we get into
more heady conversation, but thethe the social contract between
labor and capital has reallychanged, and so now it's like
capital and compute, right?
And so, um, and and that's whywe hear all this stuff about uh
electricity and what like we'reseeing like like 40 million
(10:20):
dollar exits, right?
Like base 44 sold to Wix, likeit was one guy in Israel or
whatever.
Like, so things things arecertainly changing, and people
are now bragging.
That's what I'm seeing online,is people are not bragging that
they're like a one-person agencyor this or that.
Like, so so I think the there'sa sea change that's happening.
And if you're operating yourbusiness and you're not kind of
(10:41):
uh looking up and lookingaround, you're gonna get left
behind.
And I I feel like there was thisinitial wave of people starting
to use tools, and then they justkind of go, Oh, I got more
productivity, and then theystopped and they're continuing
to operate that business.
And so, what I'm trying to do onthis podcast is continue to push
people that you need to keepgoing, like keep going.
It's gonna there's gonna be lesspeople there, and when you have
(11:04):
normal conversations in the realworld, yeah, it's it's kind of
it's kind of like people arelooking at you like, what's
going on?
Because it hasn't affected theirjobs yet.
It it hit us in marketing first,but I mean it's coming, right?
It's coming.
I I'm starting to see that thatchange.
So I know people are like, Matt,get to the point.
So I'll bring it back.
So when when you're running amarketing agency and you were
(11:25):
talking about the search andretrieve and then solve my
problem, can you go into somekind of case studies of what
that solved my problem lookslike?
How like you're getting requeststo do other things outside of
maybe just marketing, like thatyou're coming in, maybe it's
customer service, you know,you're tying stuff into the CRM,
maybe it's HR.
Like, like it, it's it's fanningout of what you can do once you
(11:48):
build this infrastructure andyou kind of orchestrate some of
these agents.
Like, can you talk through someof that?
SPEAKER_02 (11:53):
Yeah.
So we we're lucky enough where alot of our clients do want to
talk business with us.
Um, they want to kind of look atsome infrastructure.
They do want to talk aboutcustomer service.
So it's almost like a givenwhere, you know, lead gen, we're
coming in and we're going to beable to generate your leads
based upon what's going on.
But some of the case studiesthat we find is, you know, one
of the things where AI workswell is the bottleneck in
(12:16):
closing business, thebottlenecks in getting the
proposal out to the person.
I can't tell you how many timesyou look at maybe a contractor
and they come, they do anestimate on your house, and you
maybe get an estimate back.
Well, two weeks later in thisday and age, it's it's insane.
Um, or you have another B2Bservice type business that's
going out and hey, I'll I'llbring you back a quote.
I'm gonna look at these specs.
(12:36):
We're able to build platformsright now where salespeople can
do quotes on the spot and say,this is what it's gonna be,
because we're building a dataroom database.
They don't need to go in and youknow put all these specs
together and say this is whatit's gonna cost.
They literally can enter it intoan AI chatbot uh or you know,
basically a chat bot we build ontop of an LLM and it can
literally spit back a quoteright away.
(12:57):
Other bottlenecks we're workingon is there are times where in a
customer service, there is like,you know, support tickets that
they need.
And typically you would have tohave somebody call you back, or
customer service would have towalk you through that, or even
have to send somebody out.
There's actually a B2B companythat does a lot of office, you
know, office equipment wherethey interact with the chat bot
and the chatbot will actuallysolve the problem, work walking
(13:19):
the person through it.
That eliminates customer servicefor hours, they can dedicate
their time somewhere else.
The rep who would go on the roadcan now go handle something
else.
So it's identifying what isprolonging your business from
getting accomplished, whatbottlenecks are you hitting?
Is that in closing a deal?
Is that customer service?
Is that an internal plan youguys are trying to work on?
Well, let me gather all thisinformation.
(13:40):
I tell people all the time thenumber one thing you do with a
business, especially if you'rein the ad world or if you're in
the consulting world, build adata room.
And that's fancy talk forDropbox or Google Drive.
And if you want to get, youknow, real tight, you can go to
your IT department and they canreally build solid departments
or you know, rooms for you.
But organize your data, have itall organized in the right way,
(14:02):
spend the time this quarter andget it done because every AI
tool that you want to use, yousimply just plug it into this
data room and now it's talkingthrough it.
So that's how we look at it.
SPEAKER_01 (14:11):
Yeah.
And one of the things youmentioned earlier was like
custom GPTs or gems, like youcan build for each client a data
set that you're using in youryour cloud data lake, if you
will, right?
Of whatever ecosystem you're in.
And you could drop thesedocuments in there.
You can use the chat bot torecall this data to help you
create better tailored data.
(14:32):
Um, there's a lot of promptsthat you can use from a prompt
engineering standpoint, as wellas kind of like you're using
almost like a rag system, right?
To to recall this.
And then, like one of the thingsthat we're we're doing for a
couple clients, and this is youknow something that's like we're
not we're not advertising it,but we're we're building LLMs,
uh, open source LLMs on theirserver so that they can recall
(14:55):
data where it's not gettingprocessed out of house.
So they're protecting theirdata.
So like we're we're starting tolook at kind of data governance
as as as I think importantbecause these these LLMs, like
once this data gets out there,it's you know, it's hard to get
it's hard to put back in a box.
And we're even seeing um peoplethat know how to use this data,
(15:15):
like you know, they they'reusing it not appropriately,
right?
So so at a company that we'reworking with right now, we're
calling it like shadow AI, Iguess.
And so people are using it andthey're putting proprietary
information into uh the publicrealm.
And and that's not ideal, right?
Especially if you have some ofthis stuff.
So you need to understand whatLynn's talking about with kind
(15:37):
of quote unquote the data lakesor keeping your stuff internal
and making sure that it's alltalking to each other inside um
like a terms of service whereyou know what's happening to the
data.
So I just want to throw that outthere because people are moving
really fast on stuff and we'reseeing stuff break.
Um, and so you know, just justbe careful of that.
SPEAKER_02 (15:58):
Yeah, you make a I think that's excellent.
We've been telling people,matter of fact, I have my son
who's in college and he'sthinking about making a complete
180 and going to IT school.
And I can't, I I'm like, I can'tsupport that enough.
Um, I don't think peopleunderstand how important IT, you
know, and you know, all of thatis going to become here.
And I know that anthropic justhad like you probably saw that.
SPEAKER_01 (16:18):
Yeah, yeah, I posted about that.
I was just like, even thebiggest company in the world is
dealing with these like issuesof like, oh, we didn't we didn't
set something and then we justwe just uh provided all all this
research and all this data thatyeah is proprietary.
SPEAKER_02 (16:33):
Yeah, that's it's concerning.
So yeah, you know, I so I thinkit's funny because this the
conversation's got to go alittle different, but I it's my
problem with IT is this.
Number one, they are probablymore needed now in this world
than almost anything, theyreally are.
The second thing is sometimesthey're gonna handcuff you so
much you're not gonna do your AIadvancements are gonna get
small.
So I think as much as an agencyor an industry like us, like
(16:55):
marketing, like we had toadvance, I think IT has got to
understand that they are notgonna be able to control the
speed of the car.
Typically, IT and security hasalways been able to control the
speed of a car in a business.
You no longer can do that.
So I think that the IT peopleare gonna have to lean on AI in
their own right to be able tokeep up to the speed of what's
going on because they could pullyou back and hinder your
(17:15):
business.
But you're making a very, verygood point.
I think it's something everyonehas to understand.
Your data, unfortunately, if youdon't play this game right,
whether you're gonna do it onSnowflake, however you want to
build your modes, your datacould get out there just by one
dumb thing.
And if you have an employeeuploading your, you know, has to
come up with a financialdocument for the CFO and throws
up all their company informationof a Fortune 500 company, that's
(17:38):
not good.
You don't do that into a chatGPT, um, because it will get out
there.
So you make a good point.
It's it's a it's we're in areally real world where the the
privacy is a concern.
SPEAKER_01 (17:48):
So so I want to bring this back to kind of the
the path that we were on, butbut I just I wanted to highlight
that because I was talking to acybersecurity expert, and
basically people were doingstuff at the company, and it
triggered a cybersecurityresponse, which cost the company
like 15 grand because peopleweren't utilizing it internally
and it looked like a hack.
SPEAKER_00 (18:08):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (18:09):
And so, you know, it's just something to be
thinking about when you're doingthis.
And I agree with like speed, butbreak things and like you know,
whatever it is, uh you know whatI mean?
Like and like uh development inthe real world or whatever it
is, like uh there's a couplequotes out there that I think
that uh is uh a subset cultureof startup, right?
(18:32):
And I think that there's adifference between startup and
like you know, if if you have alegacy business, how do you
transform?
You go through that digitaltransformation because I feel
like a lot of companies arestarting to get through the
like, oh, we need to use socialmedia, and now there's this
whole new thing of AI and like,oh my gosh, how do we get there?
And then they're like run, run,run, run, run.
(18:53):
And you know, they don't knowwhat the tech debt that's
happening is, and uh they couldmake some faux pas that could
really uh affect their business.
So I just wanted to kind ofthrow that out there in this
conversation, but I do a hundredpercent agree that we were
affected first and and now otherbusinesses are being affected.
So we we are kind of the theguided the guides and can
(19:16):
provide the guideposts for othercompanies that are going through
this transformation because Imean we got hit with it
immediately.
Um, so what are the what are thethings that you want to make
sure to kind of communicate andcover?
Let's get back on track withthis conversation.
SPEAKER_02 (19:28):
Well, I I think you made a good point though, about
I'm asked a lot of times whenpeople somebody will say, Well,
who do you, you know, because II have people say who should we
hire internally for AI or whatshould we do for this?
I come back and I do, and I knowit's easy for me to say this,
and I'm like a really goodmarketer, a really good marketer
whose job was threatened, theexistence was threatened, they
had to learn AI from the groundup.
(19:50):
And by the way, you trulyunderstand AI if you understand
business processes.
If you truly understand how abusiness runs, how the finances
work, how their products work,and you know that great
marketers, they get so involvedin a business that they could
work for that business afterabout six months' time because
of how much they're learning.
So if you have a marketer whotruly understands how to harness
AI and then understands yourbusiness processes, that's
(20:12):
probably one of the best peopleyou can hire for this.
So, as many AI marketers thatare worried about losing their
jobs, I tell people embrace AIunlike anything you ever have in
your life, because you, themarketers, are the ones that are
going to be hired internally andexternally to help people
navigate this AI world.
Because if you're worried about,oh, I think I'm late to the
(20:32):
game, late to the game.
The best stat I've heard is 5%of companies have done anything
in AI outside of use it for atool for a little bit of
marketing, a little bit ofemails, and a little bit of
writing blog posts.
5%.
So it's kind of like what peopledidn't realize is up until
COVID, it was something like 70%of small businesses had
websites.
There was still 30% that didn'thave websites.
(20:54):
That's now now of a COVID,everybody had to get it.
You remember because you knowyou had to get online fast.
But it's, you know, so there isa huge runway for people who are
thinking about getting into AI,want to get involved.
Don't think you're late to thegame.
You're you think you're late tothe game because the amount of
information we're digesting,social media, and and you're
like, oh my God, everybody'sdoing it.
No, your your your feed andalgorithm, you think everybody's
(21:16):
doing it.
But the reality, but as you walkin a room again of 100 people,
you maybe have five people thattruly understand AI, maybe the
way you and I are talking rightnow, and the rest of them are
like, I have no idea what it is,and I'm gonna lose my job.
So I really tell people toreally lean into it.
Don't be afraid of it.
SPEAKER_01 (21:32):
Yeah, we live in a bubble to a certain degree, but
if you're in the bubble andyou're benchmarking what's
happening, it's moving quitefast.
But that's where you want to be.
You want to be the tip of thespear of what's going on.
I would love to hear kind ofsome case studies of the
organize, train, deploy,optimize, and scale kind of
framework of like how you'vebeen able to implement that and
(21:53):
what that looks like uh forbusinesses.
SPEAKER_02 (21:56):
Well, I think one of the best things companies can do
is add AI chatbots to theWebsite.
I'm coming back to the AIchatbot.
You can buy them off the shelf.
You could build one on Replit.
You could build one on ClaudeCode.
Basically, what this does is ittakes the content from your
website or a content you put ina data room and it talks to the
customers that are coming onyour website and it gives them
(22:16):
an answer.
This is not like your dad'schatbot that you remember where
they never give you an answer ora law firm one where they just
want to get your exchangeinformation to get a lead.
These things, their job isactually to try to solve your
problem and answer a question.
But from a marketingperspective, I don't think
people understand how powerfulit is.
You know, for years we sat thereand we listened to keywords and
(22:36):
user intent, right?
And we'd say, okay, well, theyall landed on this page.
This is the basket of keywordsthey were probably using.
That's gone.
Now you're actually hearingactual conversations that
they're happening with yourwebsite.
And the best part about it isthe minute you have a chatbot on
your website, you're never goingto have to worry about coming up
with a calendar again, a contentcalendar, because it's literally
(22:57):
telling you these are the 25questions that were asked this
month.
Five of these questions wecouldn't answer because there's
nothing on your website but isrelevant to your business.
So that little thing is the ahamoment for marketers and you
know, business people, when theysee that, they're like, wow.
So that's a case study.
When I tell people, I'm like,all right, AI's scary, it's big
and all of that, but why don'twe do this?
Let's let's come in in a veryeasy, affordable way.
(23:19):
And we're gonna put an AIchatbot on your website.
After 90 days, we're gonna sitback and it's gonna tell you
every single thing you know.
I say this to every person Ihear.
I guarantee when I come back in90 days and sit down in your
conference room, you will notsay, I cannot believe somebody
asked that.
I never thought I saw that.
I never thought in my life acustomer was asking that.
It never happens.
So they always see it andthey're like, oh my god, they
(23:41):
and they have a list ofquestions.
They're like, We never thoughtabout that.
I'm like, yeah, because youknow, this is what AI is doing
for you.
SPEAKER_01 (23:46):
So there's there's two things I want to say that it
makes me think back to some oldpodcasts.
First is there was a guy that Iuh brought on the podcast that
was selling um live uh chatbots,like a live human behind the
chatbot.
And I was kind of talkingsimilar to what you were saying.
And like on the call, he waslike, Are you selling AI
(24:08):
chatbots?
And I was like, No, I just thinkthat that's the future.
I think that that's where it'sgoing.
So um when you started talking,that that reminded me of it.
And so, you know, if anybody uhlistens to the podcast, they'll
know what I'm talking about, oryou can go uh check that out.
And then um one of the otherthings that you said, um, I
totally forgot.
So we'll just keep on rolling.
(24:30):
Um, but no, oh, here's what itwas.
There was another guy that wasdoing lead gen sites and uh in
kind of really like nicheindustries, like one was in the
mushroom industry, like I guessedible mushrooms and whatever.
Um, but but basically from adata mining standpoint, uh the
search box as well as could beuh extended to a chat bot, all
(24:52):
the questions that you as abusiness owner get to collect,
what people are trying to figureout and find that you don't know
that people are asking, givesyou a window into um who your
target audience is, what's goingon in their heads, like where
they're at, what questionsthey're asking.
And and a lot of times when weget the data, depending on
(25:13):
however you get it, and you lookat what the client's asking you
to do or what the client thinksis the next step, the data
doesn't always align with that.
Sometimes, like it gives youconfirmation, but sometimes it
opens up the discussion, likeyou said, to to other things.
And I think that that's reallyimportant to consider.
What do you not know about yourcustomer or why do you think
that they're buying?
(25:34):
Like doing the real dataanalysis to understand what's
happening, that's that was thestep change from traditional
marketing to digital marketing.
Like a lot of times when I talkto people that are running
terrestrial radio still orthey're running TV ads, like
when I'm on like a like a like amulti-functional team and I'm
bringing the data component, wea lot of times stay on after and
(25:56):
they're like, How is how is itaffecting the data on the
website when we're running radioads or we're running TV ads?
Because I'm trying to figureout, okay, when you run when you
when you bought this flight,like the the brand search went
like through the roof, and I cansee in the geographic areas
where that is, and then you cankind of start to map stuff out,
which has been pretty cool uhwhen you when you're working on
(26:17):
those bigger campaigns.
But what people I think need tounderstand is everything you're
doing, these LLMs are pickingthem up, like they're just like
a really smart individual.
But you push on over here,something affects over here.
You do it over here, same thingwith search systems, like you do
that, like people don'tunderstand everything you do
online affects your um your yourbrand um interpretation, your
(26:41):
your how your entitiesrepresented, how they're
associated with each other.
Like, even what you saidearlier, you like listed a bunch
of different agencies, and thenyou listed your agency in there.
Like you're building, like uh,you know, a a co-citation with
those companies, and we'reseeing like listicles come out,
like every like people don'tunderstand every single thing
that you're doing is impactinghow you're being perceived uh by
(27:06):
these tools.
And I think again, here'sanother crazy prediction.
I think everybody's gonna havetheir own chat bot, or most
people are gonna have their ownchat bot that really what you're
trying to do, and you're gonnahave other agents and uh
information, you're gonna betrying to sell to that agent so
that when that human asks thatquestion, that that personal
chat bot uh tells you what youwant them to hear.
(27:29):
And I think that that's I thinkthat that's ultimately where the
whole thing's going is yeah,your predictions.
SPEAKER_02 (27:36):
You we, yeah, I don't know, you you might have
heard me talk or I might haveheard you talk, but because I
actually said I'm like, This ismy prediction, but I might have
stole from somebody.
But um I don't know.
SPEAKER_01 (27:44):
I'm glad we're talking.
It sounds like we're on the samewavelength.
SPEAKER_02 (27:47):
Bottom line is we're on the same wavelength.
Yeah, I think it's I think thescariest thing for marketers is
exactly what you just said.
I think we're moving to a worldof agent-to-agent marketing
where your personal agent isgonna interact with another
agent, humans not even gonnahave any input whatsoever.
You're gonna, it's good, you'recounting you're looking at your
phone, be like, Oh, there's mycalendar for tomorrow or the
next day, and I'm gonna I haveto go here, I have to go there.
(28:09):
It's gonna know what creditcards to use, you know, here's
the points.
And I did hear this on a podcasta long time ago, but it was kind
of like it was kind of likeabstract.
But the more you look atsomething like open claw, the
more you maybe use agent modeand chat GPT.
And like you said, it's funnybecause now when I because I I
operate like I use, I literallyright now top my screen, I got
clawed, Gemini, and ChatGPT andNotebook LM open.
(28:32):
So, but the more I operate inall of them, and if I break up
you know all different customGPTs, you know, that's kind of
or gems or however you want tocall it projects, it it all
comes back to it, knows myentire conversation.
I had across every single one ofthem.
So that one being understandsLen Ward all the way.
So you're right.
So at what point are they gonnacome out with an apparatus,
(28:53):
which apparently Chat GPT isright around the corner having a
product that you're gonna walkaround with, and that's gonna be
interacting with every one ofthese chatbots out there.
SPEAKER_01 (29:02):
Okay, so you brought something up.
I think it's worth talking aboutbecause this is something that
that I personally do as well.
You're working with a bunch ofdifferent um uh of the major
LLMs, right?
So you you you talked aboutGemini, you talked about uh
Claude, you talked about ChatGPT.
How are you using them?
I think people would love tohear what you are using
different ones for because Icertainly have ones I go to for
(29:24):
certain things, because likealso like the like the memory
set, for example, I love chatGBT four and like where it had
per uh perpetual memory, um, andI was using it one way, and then
well, they turned that off, andnow I I like it because if I use
Claude, it will it'll try to tieit back to everything that we
(29:44):
talked about.
And if I just need like a uhlike a new thread, I'll start to
use chat GPT for this, or I'lluse Claude for this, and then
we're using Gemini's tied intoour whole workflow, and then
Manis is like hooked intoFacebook.
So I'm I'm curious just kind ofhow you're utilizing the
different LLMs, if you don'tmind sharing.
SPEAKER_02 (30:01):
No, that's that's good, great question.
So I personally use Chat GPT asmy operating system for
everything.
Um, so I have a myriad of umcustom GPTs that are built out
in there, so I am pretty much onthat daily.
That's the or that's your that'syour operating system.
That's my operating system.
Um Gemini, I find to be thesmartest.
(30:22):
So if I have to go do something,I think Gemini's deep research,
I think Notebook LLM, which is aproduct of theirs, I'll touch on
that in a minute because that'sa really under you live.
SPEAKER_01 (30:30):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's great.
Yeah, it's a great tool.
SPEAKER_02 (30:32):
Um, but so I go to Gemini when I when I look at the
Chat GPT answer, that'll comeback to me, or maybe it's
writing code or something, andI'll bring something over to
Gemini and I'll say, go throughthis.
It's funny because Gemini andChat GPT work very well
together.
If you actually get those twowhen you're kind of doing it, so
I cross-check a lot of stuff.
A lot of times, if I have aquick question and I want to
(30:52):
kind of go through something, Igo to Gemini.
So I'm finding myself using aGemini, but I'll say this that a
lot of people are saying themore I use Claude, the more I go
in there and try to touch onthings, the more I say to
myself, I'm like, Claude is sogoddamn advanced, it's
unbelievable.
I mean, it's almost like Claudeis the best version of Gemini
(31:13):
and Chat GPT, but strips out allthe bullshit.
And it's like, what do you want?
I'll create it.
That's it.
You don't have to do this andadd agent mode, and I'll do
whatever you want me to do.
So, but you know, and thenthere's by the way, there's the
other flip side that's anunderutilized tool, which is not
even notebook, but a lot ofpeople discount perplexity for
the quick search.
People like that for the search.
SPEAKER_01 (31:31):
The backlinks, like if you're if you're doing uh
backlink research on what wherewhere these LMs are pulling
from, I think I I've found thatto be the most helpful.
And uh, we've been starting tomess around with the perplexity
browser comet.
Uh yeah, it's good.
And so um I'm having a greattime.
Like, I mean, I know that it'sscary, but uh it's scary only if
(31:54):
you don't know what's going on.
And you know, I think I thinkthat that's what it is.
There's we have just so muchinformation that we're
processing today, like you know,emails and everything else, and
all this stuff is moving sorapidly and it's changing so
much, it becomes like overload.
And um, I think I think youknow, being in marketing or
(32:16):
being in digital or being likein that capacity, uh, you have a
real advantage to be able topick this stuff up because I
mean, look, the biggest problemI think in marketing is how many
different platforms are peoplestill logging into.
Like, that is my number one petpeeve.
Like, let's stop logging in toall these different platforms,
let's use NPCs to like connecteverything together and build,
(32:40):
like you say, like like the datalake to like reference from a
rag standpoint, like let'srecall this information from
this place.
Like, let's not take fracturedfragmented fractured data and
then put it all together.
I I don't know.
I just feel like marketers, itthe problem is so much in our
face that AI solves it and andit's forcing us to do it.
(33:04):
And under industries, like,look, my wife's in like
construction.
I mean, she doesn't want to haveanything to do to do with with
AI.
Um, but but I see opportunitiesfor it, I see advancements.
And I mean, I even see therobots walking out, uh, like you
know, with Melinda or whateverher name is, Melania.
Sorry, Melania.
(33:24):
Yeah, yeah.
Like, did you see that?
Like and like what Elon Musk istalking about.
I mean, when that comes aroundthe corner, I think that that's
gonna be the wake-up call likeCOVID of like, hey, you can work
from home, you can do stuffremote.
Like, I mean, Zoom calls, andI'll just say this.
Sorry, I'm on a on a on a just arant at this point, but I feel
like paid ads absolutely likeall the models we had when
(33:47):
everybody started getting intoPPC around COVID, um, threw out
like all the models that we hadof how we were running ads, and
and the market just became toosaturated.
And at a certain point, like howmuch juice can you squeeze out
of this lemon?
Like, like you need to fan outon some of these other
platforms.
And I think that that's whatforced the fan out and the
(34:08):
searching, um, and and andreally like the ad spin because
like Google's oversaturated incertain categories, it just
doesn't make sense to run ads.
And it's not that whoever'srunning the ads is uh not good
at operating it, it's just themarket uh it is flooded.
I don't know.
SPEAKER_02 (34:24):
No, I no, you're saying what I tell people all
the time.
I, you know, and I I kind of Ikind of look at it this way.
I am in lockstep with you.
I believe the lead gen that wehave all been accustomed to and
using as of late is is rapidlycoming to an end.
The the road's coming on.
So if you were a business, I saythis to a lot of lawyers, I say
this to a lot of likeservice-based people.
(34:46):
If your entire business was nomoney at all going towards a
brand except for a little bit ofswag and things like that, and
everything went towards leadgen, you were going to find
yourself in 18 months or less ina world of hurt.
It's it doesn't, it's not goingto exist the way you know you
think.
So if you're making all thesewhite papers and creating all
these blogs, although again,still works, but it's beginning
(35:08):
to draw back and fade.
So 20 some years I've been doingSEO.
I'm an SEO core at my core, I'mSEO.
I tell people all the time, I Idon't poo-poo it.
I don't, I it's it literallypaid my mortgage.
It's SEO is what I always did.
But I am, I do come out and say,if we're going from search and
retrieve to solve my problem,SEO does not live anymore.
(35:30):
It's it's going to fade away.
So as less and less people go toorganic search, more and more
people companies are going tosee that and they're going to
start spending more money onpay-per-click, which is going to
make it prohibitively to thepoint where if less people are
coming to Google and more peopleare advertising, you're going to
get to the point where you'relike, what are we doing?
So all of that's going tochange.
And the recommendation I tellcompanies all the time is two
(35:52):
things.
You got to become amicroinfluencer if you whether
you want to or not.
And number two, take the timeright now to pull the investment
back from lead gen and startputting the money into building
the brand and building your AI,solve my problem for when
clients come.
You need to do that now.
And too many companies arepushing ahead with lead gen and
saying, we'll figure it out.
And I don't think theyunderstand the train that's
(36:13):
coming.
It's not a light at the end ofthe tunnel, it's a train coming.
SPEAKER_01 (36:16):
When you and I are like so in lockstep, and and you
really set me up perfectly.
So I'm gonna do a shameless plugfor a book I wrote like five or
six years ago.
It was called Build Your BrandMania.
Okay.
And and that was actually thefirst book I ever wrote as I was
getting into the agency world.
Um, and and before, like, Imean, SEO was coming together,
(36:38):
it was probably 50% of likewhere my mind share was at the
time when I wrote that book.
But I wrote that book firstbecause I felt like you had to
build your personal brand.
This is when like the rise oflike Instagram and influencers
and all that kind of washappening.
But I still think that that bookis so relevant today because
it's about building who you areas a person, and then it's about
(37:00):
building your business.
And a lot of those, those, thosekey factors are still there.
And to even bring thisconversation back to kind of get
back, I guess, on track.
We've gone all over the place.
It's been fun, Lenny.
It's been really fun.
I would love to have you backon.
Is and and I would love to pushit forward a little bit more
with with the time that we haveleft.
But you know, Google, and I'vesaid this before, used to be
(37:24):
like a librarian.
Okay, you would go to thelibrarian and you would say,
Hey, like I need information onXYZ, and it'll be like, Go check
this out, check this out, checkthis out, check this out.
Now, what it's doing is you'regoing to the library and you're
like, give me the answer, right?
And then so they're they'regoing, they're researching all
the stuff, then they're comingback with you the answer.
And you said it.
You said, Hey, people are comingto you to doing the search that
(37:46):
way, and then when they come toyour website, you're still
asking them to figure it out andlike navigate your website, and
uh people's uh attention spansare just shrinking, shrinking,
shrinking.
I think uh Microsoft did astudy, and this was I think
2012, that said um our attentionspan was uh comparable to a
goldfish.
(38:07):
Yeah, maybe less.
Yeah, and and and that that wasbefore TikTok.
Okay.
So I would be interested to seewhat that study is now.
So I think to your point, from aconversion rate optimization
standpoint, like you're gettingpeople to come to your website,
a lot less people are coming,they're ready to buy, they're
well educated, make it easy forthem.
And in and you need to bethinking about how people are
(38:29):
operating now.
If they came to your websitethrough AI search, and you can
see that in analytics, you cansee where like it's growing,
it's growing, it's growing.
What are you doing on yourwebsite to convert?
So I would love to kind of pushthe conversation forward because
you brought that up at thebeginning of the podcast, and I
think it's so relevant.
How are we transforming whensomeone comes to the website uh
(38:51):
from the horse and buggy to likethe flying car?
If we were wanting to ElonMusk's uh, you know, whatever
roaster that's coming, like it'sapparently has wings.
Uh, I don't know.
Yeah, the Jetsons is coming,guys.
They promised it to us, and Ithink it's finally coming.
SPEAKER_02 (39:09):
So um, so well, back to the chat bot.
Uh, the reason I tell companiesto use the chat bot is so
there's there's two thoughtshere.
First, that's the future ofwebsites, worrying about
navigation and images and wherethe content's going to be.
And and you know, I here's wherethe video's got to be.
And you are gonna, we're alreadystarting to work on the first
(39:30):
websites where it's literallyjust a chatbot.
That's it.
And it's pulling in the video,it's pulling in the images, it's
pulling in the content, it'sasking, it's answering the
question.
They don't want to click around,drop, go from there.
So, my advice if you're anagency out there, start thinking
about websites way differentthan you ever have before.
The creative, the artisticdirection, the copyright, it's
(39:50):
all still matters, but now it'sgonna get pulled into a live
chat or an AI chatbot.
That is what websites are gonnalook like.
And on the flip side of that,websites are gonna have less
relevance.
You know why?
Because ChatGPT just came outand said, we're gonna start
showing less links.
Gem and I followed up and saidthe same thing.
They're all gonna come out andsay the same thing.
Why?
Because then it will be theoperating system of your life.
(40:12):
So if you haven't done thisbefore, go to ChatGPT, hit the
plus button down below, andyou're gonna see apps.
Apps is something they had acouple years ago.
They took it away, they boughtthem back.
So you're seeing all the majorcompanies with the apps in
there.
If you haven't interacted withit, go to Expedia, interact with
Expedia.
You don't ever leave ChatGPT.
You can book everything, geteverything done right there.
(40:33):
That is the future of yourwebsite.
So your website will be arepository with all of your
information.
You can do a chatbot and peoplecan kind of go through it and
pull the images and videos, andyou're gonna be building an app
along with it, which is verycheap, very affordable to do,
and all that information isgonna be in there.
So that, you know, kind ofbrings me to the question that I
think you know everybody wondersis well, what's gonna happen to
(40:54):
web traffic and how do we trackthat stuff?
I don't know.
I don't think anybody knows whatthat means.
Like, is it per interaction?
Like, what did you know?
Does the term web trafficactually not mean anything in a
couple of years?
It might.
It really might mean nothingbecause they're interacting with
your apps across theseplatforms.
So I think that's the thingwhere no world, it's it's almost
(41:16):
like you feel like you're partof like a Spanish galleon from
the 1700s crossing the water,like we don't know what the hell
the next mile is going to be.
We can't predict the weather.
You and we're just riding it.
But I think the people steeringthe ships, which are marketers,
which are really good businessconsultants, really good
leaders, you would hope thattheir experience gets you over
to where you got to be todeliver the quote unquote
(41:37):
treasure and get to that point.
But I I think that's a scarypoint right now.
Like we can forecast you and I,we can think about stuff, but
where we're going to be in 18months, I don't know.
I really don't know.
SPEAKER_01 (41:50):
So so Google came out at the beginning of the
year, they always do, of kind ofwhat they're focused on, and
they pivoted to YouTube, whichfalls in line with um what we
talked about about building thebrand.
They looked like they were alsogoing after, like you said,
collapsing the the funnel downwhere you can buy on Google.
So it looked like they weregoing head to head with Amazon.
(42:11):
So it's like Chat GBT is tryingto become, you know, Google,
Google's trying to becomeAmazon.
Um, also Google was saying, hey,YouTube's really, really
important, and we don't havetime to like open up that
thread.
But anybody that that that'slistening, uh, I've done a lot
of podcasts.
I have some great YouTubeexperts on.
Go check that out if you'restill interested in hearing more
(42:32):
about how to build that brand.
I'm gonna have to have Lynn backon.
Lynn, is there anything elsebefore I I want you to uh take
some time too to share aboutyour company and how people can
follow you and uh uh follow yourconversation?
Is um is there anything aboutthe conversation we've had today
that we didn't cover that youthought might be useful to uh
(42:52):
add to it before we get out ofhere?
SPEAKER_02 (42:54):
I want to go on exactly what you just said about
YouTube.
And this is something where I'vealways gone back and forth with
Gary Vaynerchuk.
There's times I look at him andI think the hustle, I'm like,
all right, it's a littleridiculous.
And then the other times, as oflate, I'm coming back to Gary
Vaynerchuk, and I'm like, thesome of the stuff he's saying
right now is really, reallygood.
And one of the best things hesaid, and it's a piece of advice
I give to people, not my advice,literally stealing this from
(43:14):
Gary Vaynerchuk.
He got up on a stage and hesaid, LLMs are reading your
YouTube Shorts.
They're reading your YouTubeShorts way more than you could
possibly think.
If you are not taking like thiscontent we have right here,
cutting it up on something likeOpus Clip and feeding it through
YouTube Shorts, you are making agrave mistake.
The people who invest in thatright now, do this for your
clients, do this for yourself.
(43:35):
Make them get behind a cameraand do it.
The YouTube Shorts that isgetting digested by all LLMs.
In the next six to eight months,the people who have put the
effort and time into that, youare going to start seeing them
getting cited more and more andmore on these LLMs.
I know there's a million ways inwhich you can get in there, and
there's a billion differentthings, but we've already
started testing that out andwe're saying we're seeing it
(43:56):
works.
SPEAKER_01 (43:56):
So I I think from uh uh the PR news cycle.
Standpoint, uh, YouTube fallsinto that category of like news.
So it's one of the things thatyou can do to kind of drive that
conversation and kind of checkthat box in the algorithm.
So YouTube, I and we're seeingthat we're seeing a lot of
requests of like, hey, can youhelp us with the podcast or
create content?
Um, and and you know, I justthink that this is where it's
(44:19):
going.
And people are like, oh my gosh,that's so difficult.
Well, it's been difficult.
It's it was kind of like a anice to have, maybe a couple of
years ago.
I think it's we're moving intoalmost a need to have.
And if you don't do it, it it'sjust gonna make life more and
more difficult.
And we're seeing we're seeingthat, we're seeing some kind of
desperation uh starting tohappen for certain businesses
(44:40):
that really didn't invest theirbrands.
So I think the biggest takeawayhere is well, it's a sea change,
it's a a a new discovery, a newfuture that we're moving into.
And like we're looking for theexplorers.
So uh, you know, if you knowanybody that really um likes to
explore and see where things aregoing and is a tech geek, refer
(45:01):
the refer out this podcast, letthem know about it.
Please follow and like um thatalgorithm really like we were
we're we're a podcast that hasbeen on iTunes for 15 something
years.
And you know, as we moved overto YouTube, like people don't
know we're there.
Uh people don't listen toYouTube that same way.
So we're we're reinventing whatwe're doing.
(45:22):
But um, if you're listening, youlike it, please, please give us
a like, please give us a follow,really, really help us out.
Lynn, how do people get in touchwith you?
Where are you putting outcontent?
How do people follow kind ofyour thought process uh these
days?
SPEAKER_02 (45:35):
They can just go to comexis.com, you can fill out a
form, you will, you will workwith me directly.
We are very, very selective, andnot to sound like a big shot.
We're very selective in who wework with.
We have a bandwidth that wehold, um, go from there, but you
can always follow me on YouTube,shorts at Comexis, you can
follow us on LinkedIn atComexis.
We try to get out as muchcontent as we can, at least a
couple times a week.
A lot of our podcasts are onthere, but any questions, I'm
(45:56):
always happy to jump on a calland kind of go through things.
SPEAKER_01 (45:59):
Awesome.
And the last thing I'll say, oh,my voice just uh popped there.
So last thing I'll say is I'vebeen trying to change our intro,
guys, for a long time.
It's on my list, it's very low.
If anybody wants to submit uh uhintro, and uh we will look at
them and we could select thebest one.
So appreciate any kind ofcrowdsource help.
We definitely are hiring rightnow.
(46:19):
We are hiring.
Um, we need people with certainskill sets, you can check it out
online, or you can reach out tous uh directly at
ewrdigital.com.
But if you want to grow yourbusiness with the largest, most
powerful tool on the planet, theinternet.
Well, and AI, I feel like AI isprobably the next phase.
Um listen to this podcast.
(46:40):
Um, listen to this podcast.
Uh, reach out to us, leave us acomment.
We really appreciate it.
Uh Lynn, thanks so much forcoming on.
Um, we'll we'll get we'll getyou back on too to continue the
conversation.
There's some threads we couldopen up there.
Until the next time, everybody.
My name is Matt Bertram.
Bye bye for now.
Popular Podcasts
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.